Jungle Disk Software Version 3.20.1 Now Available!

Jungle Disk 3.20.1 Now Available on All Platforms

It’s an exciting day for us here at Jungle Disk! Today, we are releasing another round of updates to our core software, available for all editions of Jungle Disk on all platforms. This particular release is special for a couple of reasons:

Since becoming an independent company in Jan. 2016, this is the first release that has been available to all operating systems simultaneously.

We’ll be enabling our “auto-update” feature, which will notify Jungle Disk users that an updated version of the software is available and assist users in the update process.

Below, I will delve into the details of the 3.20.1 release and discuss how Jungle Disk will approach future software updates and releases. My goal is to give you an idea of what to expect from our regular software updates and what’s on the roadmap for our core software. Let’s go!

Jungle Disk version 3.20.1

The Details:

Our core focus with Jungle Disk version 3.20.1 was to bring the Windows software up-to-date with our Linux and Mac software, continue to stabilize the application for use on the newest versions of major operating systems, improve overall performance of the application, and make security improvements. This release is what we would classify as a “patch” release, meaning that major features and functionality remain the same as in previous versions. This patch release resolved a few small bugs in the Windows installation process, fixed some user interface sizing issues on Linux and Mac, and resolved an issue in the Jungle Disk Server packages for RPM-based Linux systems. You can read more about the initial release of 3.20 here.

Automatic Updates:

As you’re reading this, you may very well have seen something very similar to the above screenshot. This is the “auto-update” feature mentioned near the beginning of this post. Starting today, we’ve enabled this auto-update feature for all 64-bit Windows installations of Jungle Disk Workgroup, Server, Desktop and Simply Backup, and we’ll be doing the same for our Mac customers in the near future. As for our Linux users, unfortunately. there isn’t an auto-update mechanism. We’ll be sure to make sure we keep you up-to-date when new releases are available.

As our frequency of updates increases, you will see this prompt more often, so we wanted to ensure that we addressed this feature and how it fits into our release process. If you have any questions about the updated process, please reach out to our support team.

On Mac or Linux and want to update?
For Jungle Disk Server and Workgroup, click here.
For Jungle Disk Desktop and Simply Backup, click here (you’ll need to log in).

Jungle Disk Release Process:

The Jungle Disk research and development (R&D) team is always striving to improve our software. The focus of a software update can cover items such as security, usability, new features, reliability, and/or bug fixes. We want to ensure that our customers are using the most up-to-date, secure, performant version of our software available; our auto-update process is a huge asset for this purpose. Additionally, we want to ensure that customer administrators are informed of upcoming releases, have the opportunity to try out new updates, and plan for their users to update. I’ll lay out the general logistics and processes that we’ll be following for future releases of the Jungle Disk software.

What’s in a version number and why does it matter?

The Jungle Disk R&D team is committing to following the general rules behind Semantic Versioning (SemVer). This approach to numbering/versioning releases breaks down very simply, take today’s release for example:

3Major Release Number:

Today’s release makes no change to the MAJOR release version, but when we reach a major release point, we will give our customers at least a 45 day notice before “turning on” auto-update. Additionally, we may have beta testing periods where customers can try out the new version, test its functionality, report bugs/issues and offer feedback.

Changes to this number are defined as “MAJOR version when you make incompatible API changes.” While Jungle Disk does not publicly expose an API, a MAJOR version release could take a number of different shapes. For example, changes to core functionality, configuration and user interfaces would likely fit this category, but only when these changes are not backwards-compatible.

20Minor Release Number:

For future MINOR releases, we’ll give customer administrators notice of 45 days prior to enabling auto-update, as these updates may affect the way in which customers utilize the Jungle Disk software. In today’s release, for example, we incremented the MINOR version of the Windows software because we made several changes to the installation process. This could affect the way in which some customers deploy the software but would not negatively impact current installations. This is why we did not offer 45 days notice for this particular release.

Changes to this number are defined, “MINOR version when you add functionality in a backwards-compatible manner.”

1Patch Release Number:

In today’s release, as mentioned above, the changes focused primarily on bug fixes, hence this number being bumped up from 0 to 1. This type of release will be the most common and we’ll utilize our auto-update feature to make new versions available to all users with just a few clicks inside the application. In the future, we’ll announce these releases in the Jungle Disk control panel 36-48 hours prior to “turning on” auto-update so that our customer administrators are aware of the forthcoming updates and can manually install them earlier if they would like.

Changes to this number are defined, “PATCH version when you make backwards-compatible bug fixes.”

I realize this information might be a bit in the weeds but I hope it gives insight into how we’ll approach releases in the future, how the version number factors into being able to quickly gauge the scope of changes in a release/update, and how we are planning to communicate with customers regarding new releases.

Have some feedback on our release process? Suggestions on how we notify users and customers? Leave a comment below!